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Reviews
The Midnight Meat Train (2008)
Generic, Throwaway Film
This movie is a wretchedly told story where it establishes many elements, but follow through with them either poorly or not at all.
On one hand the gore is actually done quite well. This was made during a time where CGI blood was exploited quite a bit, but this movie doesn't always follow those easy way outs when it comes to production value. I felt those horrible (as in gory) death scenes, even when over the top, were done well. I may have seen a cheesy effect maybe once or twice, but for the most part it does those parts fine.
What this movie does wrong is one word "development." The killer is your generic, Michael Myers/Jason Vorhees juggernaut murderer who is literally disposable and one-dimensional. He is a butcher, but also wears a fancy suit. The two aren't put together well, and we learn nothing about his character except that his body is old and withering, but nothing else. The girlfriend character existed as an artificial means to have the main character have a conflict of interest near the final confrontation. She didn't have any pay off, even when she discovered the train schedule it had no impact on the main character's investigation since the conductor is the one who gives it to him. The main character shoots himself in the foot by telling his girlfriend about his plans in detail, pretty much asking her to put herself in danger. The conductor, who is portrayed as the head guy behind this train "conspiracy" speaks only twice in the whole movie and serves to shout basic, bland exposition with no insight.
The ending is the most half-assed, tacked on ending that one probably made up on a paper napkin the day before filming. This ending pretty much destroyed the film for me. Introducing this Matrix-minded organization that protects the world from "the world that we know of" (protecting against these zombie monsters similar to "The Descent" apparently) in the last five minutes is the laziest form of conclusion. Having the main character become the new butcher was predictable, but they make that transition incredibly poorly by going from him witnessing this cult killing his girlfriend and having his tongue ripped out and then straight into him being the butcher. The conductor states "It must be done," but the main character spent the whole movie trying to stop the butcher activities and just like that he suddenly switches sides. We don't see what exactly convinced him. If it was just the "It must be done" argument, then the main character is just weak and didn't care that much about stopping them.
The movie only exists to have a killer and a body count, which is fine, but even those kind of movies take some time to develop the things they introduce. This movie explains nothing and gives barely any hints of true motivation backing the characters, and the ending is the most rushed, lazily executed I've seen in a while. You could ask this movie tons of questions, but the movie gives you the distinction that those questions wouldn't be asked, and they don't care to answer them at all.
I could be looking to far into it, this could be a "What did you expect?" kind of situation, but I think I was looking for a movie, that might have been my mistake. I just heard this movie was supposed to make you think on a deeper level, sort of like the philosophy of "The Matrix." Yeah, no, this movie doesn't even attempt at that. I just felt insulted by this movie's belief that I would just ignore its laziness. I think this movie is for those who just want an hour and a half of slasher-movie nonsense, which is something I can understand and can even get behind.
Warriors of Virtue (1997)
Rather Slow and Boring With a Fun Villain
Warriors of Virtue is a rather strange movie, but I find it a great bore. While the idea of martial art marsupials seems goofy and stupid, but at least it would be entertaining. This movie, however, seems to have a consistency of dragging dialogues, confusing setups, and poor delivery. It takes forever for the action to start up, and when it does, the cinematography is unnecessary and often hard to make out. The very idea of the movie may sound silly, it had promise to at least be ridiculously entertaining, but the slow route it takes and the basic "nothingness" it envelopes kind of makes it not so much a good movie. However, the one thing that always brought me back to this film was the villain. The acting in the villain's case is just so over-the-top and enjoyably hilarious that he makes the film worth watching. Give him props because he was starred in other movies like "Titus."